First Place: What the Body Refuses

What the Body Refuses

by Aneisha Gupta

First Place

The first time my throat tightened at the temple, I thought it was God.

I was ten years old, standing barefoot on the cool stone floor of our local Hindu temple, waiting for my offerings, waiting for my prashad. As far back as I can remember, my birthdays always began with prayers at the temple alongside my family. Incense curled toward the ceiling, blurring the golden edges of the deities. The priest’s voice rose and fell like an ancient rhythm, a sound that lived in me long before I learned English in the United States. My Amma stood beside me with her hands pressed together, praying for my future, my safety, and my success. I admired her dedication to keeping our culture alive in America. My grandmother, Nani, caught up with us halfway through the prayer, moving slowly in her wheelchair but determined not to miss the moment.

As the line moved forward, I waited anxiously to receive the blessed food from the gods. The warmth of the prashad plate called to me: ghee, sugar, cardamom, all the scents of belonging. I didn’t know it then, but that would be the last time prashad felt simple.

The priest dropped a laddoo into my open palm, its surface still syrupy and warm. Without hesitation, I popped it into my mouth. The sweetness spread instantly, familiar and comforting, until it wasn’t.

There was an unfamiliar crunch inside the sweet. Something felt wrong. Later, I would learn it was a piece of cashew. At ten years old, I didn’t understand that food itself could hurt you. By the time we reached the temple exit, a prickling sensation had begun at the corners of my lips. I scratched at them absentmindedly, only to feel swelling spreading across my face. The itch grew into heat, and the heat sharpened into pain. My throat felt as though invisible hands were pressing down on it, slowly tightening their grip.

I tugged on Amma’s sleeve.

“What is it?” she whispered, still facing the priest.

The word water screamed in my head, but only a rasp escaped my mouth. Pain radiated across my skin.

“What’s happening?” Amma turned toward me fully now. “Are you choking?”

One auntie shook her head dismissively. “No, no. Heat rash. Happens to all the kids. Give her water.”

Another chimed in. “Maybe she’s overwhelmed. Give the child some space.”

But I wasn’t overwhelmed. I was drowning on dry land.

My breathing had become shallow and staggered. Amma grabbed my hand and shouted for my father.

“Appa, get the car now!”

The entire ride, my chest felt smaller and smaller, as though my lungs were folding inward. By the time we reached the emergency room, I no longer had the energy to match the panic around me. Bright lights, needles, and stinging sensations on my inner forearm blurred together. Words I couldn’t understand—anaphylaxis, epinephrine, airway support—flooded the room. Everything inside me pulsed with fear and confusion.

But beneath all the noise, only one question echoed in my mind:

Why was my body rejecting God?

The doctors called it a severe nut allergy.

A week later, at the allergist’s office, Dr. Drew drew neat rows across my forearms with a blue pen and placed tiny droplets of allergens into each square. I watched angry red welts bloom across my skin like a map I didn’t know how to read. The itching came first, followed by swelling beneath the surface, as though something inside my body had been insulted and was fighting back. Amma hovered beside me, asking repeatedly if it hurt, even though she winced every time the doctor touched my arm.

Dr. Drew rolled his stool beside me, calm in the way adults sometimes are when your world feels like it’s collapsing.

He pointed to one welt. “This one says tree nuts.”

Another. “This one says cashews.”

Another. “This one says pistachios.”

Then he paused at the largest welt, raised and furious against my skin.

“And this one,” he said with a small chuckle, “is your body saying it really meant it.”

I tried to laugh, but the sound came out dry. My forearms looked stamped with tiny swollen handprints.

“So… I can’t eat anything?” I asked quietly.

“Not anything,” he corrected gently. “Just the things we know are unsafe. We’ll teach you how to read ingredient labels. This is manageable. You’ll learn. Kids usually learn faster than the adults around them.”

He smiled after saying it, the kind of smile adults use when they’re trying to make fear seem smaller.

Behind me, Nani released a disapproving sigh.

“Her body is confused,” she said firmly. “She grew up on American food. Packaged snacks. In India, this wouldn’t happen.”

Dr. Drew didn’t argue with her. Maybe he understood that it wouldn’t help. Maybe he had met enough families like ours to know that science wasn’t just information—it was a language some people needed time to trust.

Amma cleared her throat. “So this is forever?”

“For now,” Dr. Drew replied. “Sometimes allergies lessen. Sometimes they don’t. Our goal is safety, not predictions.”

Then he handed me the epipen.

Not dramatically. Not with a speech. He simply placed it in my hands as though it were any other tool.

“This is how you keep yourself safe,” he said. “You keep it with you. Always.”

I nodded, though the word always felt impossible.

I was ten years old. I forgot my lunchbox at school half the time.

He guided my thumb to the blue end of a trainer injector.

“Blue to the sky,” he said.

Then he tapped the orange end.

“Orange to the thigh.”

The rhythm felt strangely gentle for something that looked so much like a weapon.

When the appointment ended, my arms were still swollen with fading welts. I held them stiffly as we walked to the car, afraid movement alone might make them flare again. Amma kept glancing at me as though she wanted to pick me up and carry me, even though I was far too old for that.

In the car, she fussed constantly.

“Tell me if it burns. I have lotion.”

“It’s fine. It’ll go away,” I muttered.

But nothing about this felt temporary. Not the itching. Not the embarrassment. Not even the sudden realization that my body could violently reject something everyone around me considered holy.

Nani clicked her tongue. “In India, doctors don’t scare patients like this. They give simple advice. Eat healthy food, and nothing will happen.”

Appa stayed silent, his hands tightening around the steering wheel.

I stared out the window at the blurred Houston sidewalks and ordinary people moving through ordinary afternoons. Everything looked painfully normal while my skin still pulsed with heat.

It felt as though there were suddenly two versions of me: the girl sitting in the car, terrified to swallow her own saliva, and the girl I had been before all of this—the girl who accepted prashad without hesitation, who never questioned what was inside her food or whether her body could betray her.

Somewhere between the allergist’s office and our driveway, I realized I didn’t know which version of myself I was supposed to become.

When we got home, Amma helped me out of the car even though I didn’t need help. She fussed with my backpack, my seatbelt, the front door—anything she could touch. Anxiety makes some people quiet. It made her overly careful.

Before we went inside, she knelt in front of me.

“Say something,” she whispered. “I can’t tell how you’re feeling.”

I looked at the worry carved into her forehead, at the desperation in her eyes for this to somehow make sense.

“It’s just an allergy,” I said, because that was what the pamphlet called it.

But the words felt too small for what had happened.

Amma cupped my cheek gently. “Your body is strong,” she said, almost pleading.

I didn’t know how to explain that strength felt meaningless when your own throat could close against you.

The welts eventually faded. The shame didn’t.

That night, I lay awake staring at the faint blue dots left behind by the allergy tests. They looked like tiny portals into a version of myself I could no longer reach—a girl whose body felt predictable and trustworthy. I kept tracing them with my fingertips even after they started fading, the same way people touch bruises long after the pain is gone, just to remind themselves that something happened there.

The house was quiet except for the hum of the ceiling fan and the soft jingling of Nani’s anklets as she moved through her room. Somewhere in the kitchen, Amma washed the same teacup twice, the way she always did when she worried herself in circles.

I could feel everyone’s fear pressing through the walls like humidity.

In the days that followed, my arms healed faster than the rest of me. The blue dots disappeared, but the space they carved into my mind remained. I started noticing things I had ignored before: the snap of a classmate opening a granola bar filled with nuts, the smell of cashews frying in the temple kitchen, and the rustling wrappers in our own pantry at home.

I didn’t want to become the child who feared food, but my body reacted before my thoughts could catch up, forcing me into constant alertness.

At school, allergies were ordinary. Kids compared inhalers and epipens the way they compared Pokémon cards. But at home, especially at temple, everything carried emotional weight. Every refusal felt like disrespect. Every question about ingredients sounded like doubt.

What unsettled me most was not the medical diagnosis itself. It was the cultural confusion surrounding it, the feeling that my body had somehow violated an unspoken rule.

The next time prashad was offered, I stepped back instinctively. The priest hesitated just long enough for shame to bloom in my stomach. One auntie whispered something about “sensitive American kids,” as though my throat closing had been a matter of patriotism.

Amma squeezed my hand so tightly her knuckles turned white.

We left early that day, and during the drive home, no one said what we were all thinking: something sacred had shifted, and none of us knew how to restore it.

Eventually, I stopped going to temple altogether.

At first, I blamed homework. Then headaches. Then imaginary school projects. No one pushed too hard. Pretending nothing was wrong was easier than admitting that I no longer felt safe there.

Over time, the absence became routine.

I still prayed at home occasionally, but the temple became something distant, something I remembered the way people remember childhood friends they slowly outgrow.

By college, I could explain my allergy in clinical language, but the emotional part remained unresolved. I majored in public health almost accidentally. It felt like a way to understand all the things no one had known how to explain to us when I was ten.

At the community clinic where I volunteered, families arrived carrying the same uncertainty my parents once had: unsure which details mattered medically, unsure whether their English was enough, and unsure whether anyone would take their fears seriously.

I listened more than I spoke.

Sometimes people simply needed someone who understood the quiet shame of not having the right words.

Helping them felt strangely familiar, like translating between two versions of myself.

Then, during my sophomore year, an email appeared in my inbox from the temple.

They were hosting a community workshop on allergies and emergency safety and needed volunteers.

I stared at the subject line long enough for my laptop screen to go dark.

The thought of returning there tightened my chest in the same way it had outside the emergency room years earlier. But beneath the fear was something else: curiosity, unfinished grief, maybe even hope.

Maybe a place that once made you feel alien didn’t have to remain that way forever.

When I arrived at the workshop, the temple looked exactly as I remembered it: cool stone floors, heavy incense, and familiar prayers echoing through the halls. Yet everything also felt slightly rearranged, as though the building itself had aged alongside me.

The priest recognized my mother’s eyes in my face before he recognized me.

I set out my materials: trainer epipens, ingredient labels, and sample snacks with allergen warnings. Families trickled in slowly—curious teenagers, cautious parents, and aunties pretending not to care before asking the most detailed questions of all.

As I explained how allergens hide in familiar foods—barfi dusted with pistachios, halwa topped with almonds, chutneys thickened with peanut powder—the room leaned closer.

I demonstrated the epipen exactly the way Dr. Drew once demonstrated it to me, except this time I translated every step in the language my family had needed years ago.

Halfway through my presentation, I heard the soft squeak of Nani’s wheelchair.

She settled into the front row, her sari perfectly pleated, her expression unreadable.

For a moment, my voice trembled.

Then I continued.

When someone asked whether prashad was “protected by blessing,” I answered gently.

“Blessings don’t erase ingredients. They guide intention, not chemistry.”

A quiet ripple moved through the room.

Not agreement exactly, but recognition.

Then Nani raised her hand.

“If we didn’t understand before,” she asked slowly, “and you were harmed… did we fail you?”

The room fell completely silent.

I looked at her carefully and realized that what I had mistaken for stubbornness years ago had really been fear.

“You didn’t fail me,” I said softly. “We just didn’t know. None of us did. But now we do, and that means we can make different choices.”

Something inside my chest loosened.

After the workshop, the priest guided me toward the prashad table.

Two trays sat beneath newly printed signs:

CONTAINS NUTS

and

NUT-FREE PRASHAD

He scooped from the nut-free tray and paused before handing it to me.

“Can you eat this safely?” he asked.

No one had ever asked me that before.

Not there. Not once.

The question itself felt sacred.

“Yes,” I answered, surprised by the steadiness of my own voice.

The prashad was warm, soft, and simple. It didn’t taste like the one from my childhood, but maybe it didn’t need to.

Maybe things can change and still remain holy.

Outside, the evening sky softened into pale pink.

Amma caught my arm gently while Nani brushed her fingers against my cheek the way she used to when she thought I was asleep.

For the first time in years, I didn’t feel like I had to shrink myself to fit inside a place I once loved.

My body still rejected certain things. That had not changed.

What changed was everything around it.

Maybe belonging is not something handed to you. Maybe it is something a community learns to practice.

Maybe the body’s refusal is not rejection at all, but an invitation for the world around you to grow alongside you.

As I walked toward my car, the epipen in my bag felt less like a warning and more like a reminder: of survival, of adaptation, and of how far one child’s fear can ripple outward until it becomes understanding.

And for the first time, it felt like enough.

Winning pieces are published as received.

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Fiction Potluck

April 2026

First Place Winner:

Aneisha Gupta

Aneisha Gupta is a Public Health Honors student at The University of Texas at Austin pursuing interests in medicine, health communication, and community-centered healthcare. Her writing often explores the intersection of cultural identity, patient experience, and belonging through reflective and character-driven narratives. She is involved in undergraduate research, clinical volunteering, and public health outreach initiatives focused on healthcare accessibility and education.