Silence…Can You Hear It: Two Interesting Medical Facts That We Were Made Aware Of In The Film

Silence… Can You Hear It, is a murder mystery film, written and directed by Aban Bharucha Deohans, that premiered on ZEE5 on 26 March. The film stars Manoj Bajpayee, Prachi Desai, and Arjun Mathur in prominent roles, and revolves around the story of the investigation behind a young girl’s murder. While the plot of the movie is unfolding with its investigation, it also tells us two interesting medical facts, that we never heard of. Read on to know more about it.

Rigor Mortis

The first medical fact that we get to know in the film, is about ‘Rigor Mortis’. By definition, Rigor Mortis is the chemical change that occurs in a corpse, that stiffens its muscles after death. The process helps the forensic team to find out the time of death while investigating. While in other murder mystery films and shows, we have heard dialogues of the cops finding out the ‘time of death’ of a person, we never knew the medical term for it was Rigor Mortis. 

Source: ZEE5

In Silence, the term is mentioned by Manoj Bajpayee’s character, ACP Avinash Verma, when he and his team begin the investigation of the murder of Pooja (Barkha Singh). There is a scene, when ACP Verma finds out that in Pooja’s corpse, her rigor mortis has been damaged, as in, her muscles that should have been stiffened after her death, are no longer in the same state. This leads him to draw the conclusion that long after Pooja’s death, her corpse was moved to a different location, which did not let the muscles get stiff. This revelation adds even more mystery to the film’s story and makes it more intriguing.

Also read: Silence Can You Hear It: 6 Reasons Why You Will Enjoy Watching Manoj Bajpayee’s Mystery Thriller

Comatose Patients Can Hear and Understand

Another interesting fact that the film Silence conveys, is that comatose patients can hear and even understand the conversations happening around them. Until now, the mainstream media had conveyed to us that people who are in a state of coma can not understand the conversations going on around them but Silence broke that trope. This fact was revealed when in the film ACP Verma visits Kavita Khanna (Hitha Chandrashekhar) in hospital while investigating Pooja’s murder. Kavita Khanna is lying in a comatose stage, and when ACP Verma is in her ward, her doctor (Micky Makhija) says to him, “Please do not say anything that might upset her.”

Source: A still from the film

Baffled by this, ACP Verma asks the doctor how a comatose person could hear him because, like us, he had also thought that that was not possible. At this moment, the doctor says that contrary to the common belief, people who are in a coma can actually hear and understand what is going on around them. Also, further in the film, Kavita Khanna begins to recover, and while still in a coma, she begins to be able to respond to what she hears, by simple hand gestures, like moving a finger.

Fun fact: In this revelation, lies the secret behind the movie’s title!

Watch Silence… Can You Hear It on ZEE5.

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