Millions of families from rural India move to the big cities in search of employment and “Mariam” follows one such migrant worker family. The breadwinner is Mariam, who has to look after her three daughters and also takes on an illegal surrogate pregnancy to earn for her family in Mumbai.
“At that moment, I thought about what will happen to the baby and surrogate mother if a couple get divorced during the pregnancy period. Whose responsibility will be the baby? That thought lingered for a long time and it was the seed for generating the story of ‘Mariam’,” Pratap told. “Later I read some other articles about illegal surrogacy in a small town called Anand in Gujarat, India.
Mariam is played by Chitrangada Satarupa , who prepared a backstory for her character and watched a few films recommended by Pratap on the not-so-pleasant side of the pregnancy experience. This helped her widen her perspective regarding representation of pregnant women in cinema. The actor also researched pregnant women, especially women who have conceived more than once or twice, and was fortunate in that two people close to her were pregnant at that time.