My ugly hands.

They were bent, distorted and ugly. You might even have suspected they lost their function altogether. I remember looking at those pair of hands and trying very hard to recall the seven salient points about the manifestation of rheumatoid arthritis in a patient's hands.

The grossly distorted hands belonged to Mdm T. "So what did you use to do?" I asked.

"I was a hawker," she replied gently in mandarin. " I used to help my son cut vegetables and meat at his noodle stall. We were doing very well. Then I had this painful arthritis and my fingers became like that. I could no longer cut vegetables because of the pain so I turned to serve the customers noodles instead. But people see my que xian (defect) and become afraid of eating my food. So I stopped working."

I remember Mdm T even though I met her many months ago because I could never forget the colour in the words of her voice- that sense of utter dejection, and rejection.

"They are so ugly."

Que xian. It means defect in mandarin. Ren jia kan dao wo de que xian jiu pa. People see my defect and become scared.

I don't know if I said the right thing. When faced with such circumstances on a daily basis, very few of us ever do. But I remember replying in mandarin, "Mdm T, don't be sad. Each one of us has a defect too, just that some of them are visible, and some are not. But we all carry defects (wo men dou you que xian)- you're not alone."

I think those words hit me far harder than they did her. Each one of us has a defect, just that some of them are visible, and some are not. But we all do.

I met up with some friends today. One had injured her knee so badly during dance training that she felt embarrassed climbing the stairs at the train station, simply because she had to walk so slowly because of the pain; another has been on long-term medication because of lupus, a condition where the body's immune system attacks itself; yet another two were not in our midst because one had been warded for gall-stones and another had suffered a slipped disc.

The funny thing is, we are all less than twenty-five... looking healthy, strong, ready to take on the world. Yet, who but God and ourselves know the hidden infirmities and afflictions buried within our bodies.

Some defects are more visible than others. But defects they are, nonetheless.

It reminded me of all the psychiatric patients I had seen walk into the doctor's room. Each had a normal-looking face, a face just like yours and mine. A face that could have been you or I had our circumstances changed. Yet, who would have guessed the extent of debilitation each of their masked secrets had caused them. A young man whom my tutor had assigned me to interview turned beetroot red as he spoke softly to me. He is recovering from a social disorder which was so severe at one point that it was impossible to talk to anyone of the opposite sex, impossible to take public transport, impossible to attend school and impossible to simply go out for a run because "everyone is watching me". I then realised he was blushing at me.

Who would have known?

It's so easy to be insensitive, get mad or pass callous remarks when we don't see beneath the surface. And when we do see the visible defects of others, why is it that we run a mile away, forgetting that our defects, too, lay within our skin. I thought of how often I can still laugh and joke sometimes even when I'm feeling terrible inside- not everything is visible, always.

Maybe it's about time we realised that like Mdm T, we all each have a defect too. Wo men dou you que xian. And there's no need for us to ever run away because of a pair of ugly hands, because each of us owns them too.

When we finally remind ourselves, over and over, that we all have a pair of ugly hands too, it is perhaps then, that we can be a little bit kinder, a little bit gentler and little bit more forgiving, more human for our brother in need.

Be kinder than necessary

for everyone you meet is fighting some sort of battle.

- Anonymous