Renu speaks about her NDE on BBC Radio 4

On 10 December 2023, Renu spoke on BBC Radio 4 about the near-death experience that followed her accident in 2017, and about the work that grew from it: The Burgundy Book.

Telling this story in a radio studio is a strange act, since the experience itself existed beyond the ordinary shape of language. Renu was hit by a bus and dragged beneath its wheel; her body was in terrible danger, yet her consciousness seemed to move elsewhere, and she witnessed the scene from beyond her body and experienced a life review in the form of three books.

The Blue Book held her past, the Green Book held her survival, and the Burgundy Book contained the future she had not yet lived - Renu returned to her body before she could see what was inside it.

For a long time after the accident, her voice changed and then disappeared into silence, and as an actor and singer, that loss reached into the centre of who she understood herself to be; eventually, music and writing became a way of approaching what had happened when ordinary explanation could not.

Speaking about the experience on BBC Radio 4 allowed her to share not only the facts of the accident, but the question that has remained with her ever since: what do we do with the future we have been returned to, especially when it looks nothing like the life we expected?

That question continues to guide The Burgundy Book, Renu’s artistic response to trauma, survival, love and the mysterious territory between a life that ended and one that carried on.