Prayer messaging

[arcticpenguin]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=757&e=2&u=/nm/20030903/od_nm/sms_dc

BOMBAY (Reuters) - Busy Indians are jumping the temple lines during one of Bombay's biggest Hindu festivals by making their offerings through SMS.

For $1.10, plus the message charge, devotees can SMS PUJA (prayer) to the BPL Mobile cellular operator to have prayers said for them at the city's most popular temple to the elephant-headed god Ganesh.
(I think SMS means cell phone text messaging. Correct me if I'm wrong)

"It helps our subscribers get some sort of a pious feeling," said Krishna Angara, chief operating officer of BPL Mobile, which has almost a million customers in Bombay's Maharashtra state.
Surprisingly candid. How many people are willing to admit that praying is about "getting a pious feeling"?

[swstephe]

Yes SMS is also called "text messaging". It is amazingly popular in Asia. You can get all kinds of services through SMS. Americans are so slow to pick up on that kind of technology.

Malaysia has been going back and forth about allowing Muslims to being able to divorce through an SMS message. I think the latest is that it is not supported anymore.

I remember a number of years ago, when the internet first started becoming popular, one website offerred the ability to pay respect to ancestors for the Chinese "ching ming" festival electronically.