In India, only mediocrity sells.

Popularly known in the industry as JD, his production house, Hats Off Productions, is almost synonymous with humour and ‘slice of life’ drama. Jamnadas Majethia’s perseverance and talent are what have earned him the stature he enjoys today. Television channels crave to feature his shows. Along with co-founder Aatish Kapadia, he has invented a new form of humour with shows such as ‘Khichdi’ and ‘Sarabhai vs Sarabhai’.

JD recalls how, in the early days of his career, he saved Rs 50,000 to publish an ad in a magazine to promote a film he had made on himself. He is also candid about his unsuccessful tryst with Bollywood. In this tête-à-tête with Sapna Nair of agencyfaqs!, JD talks unabashedly about the failures in his life, which nevertheless routed him to the fame and satisfaction he enjoys today.

Edited Excerpts

Being an MBA with a specialisation in marketing, I wanted to join an advertising agency. I joined ‘The Times of India’ because I thought that would be the closest step to an advertising agency. I then worked with Mudra as a client servicing executive and then at Mudra Videotech. However, in just two and a half years, I got bored and then I finally decided to quit and focus on my acting career.

To give a kick-start to my acting career, I made a promotional film on myself and titled it ‘Yes, I Killed Shah Rukh Khan’. I invested around Rs 50,000 to place an ad in a magazine. The film did invite a lot of controversy, but finally bombed.

My next step was to act in plays. After some time, I started producing plays and I also modelled for various ads. I realised that whatever I did as a producer became a super hit. Three of my plays ran for more than 200 shows.

Then, in 2002, Aatish Kapadia and I started Hats Off Productions and came up with ‘Khichdi’. After that, we did not have to look back, thanks to back-to-back hit shows such as ‘Sarabhai vs Sarabhai’, ‘Main Office Tere Aangan Ki’ and ‘Kudkudiya House No. 43’.

My failures have taught me that no failure is the end of life. Having gone through all these crises, today, I have become more patient. I have also learnt that peoples’ opinions matter.

We recently deleted more than 125 episodes of ‘Baa Bahoo aur Baby’ because we realised that the audiences didn’t like a particular sequence.

Theatre is live. You can keep growing with every show as an actor. In television, too, one can grow, but the time to improvise and grow is less. You can come up with superior quality of work in theatre after some episodes, but television is a continuous process.

Theatre audiences are a little more serious than television viewers. However, in terms of maturity, I don’t see any difference because, ultimately, both want entertainment.

I feel theatre audiences are more sincere because they come and buy tickets to seek entertainment. Loyalty is stronger in theatre than it is on television. After a certain point, television audiences will go for the actors more than the shows. So, on television, the actors decide the loyalty, not the programmes. But things are changing.

My theatre experience has helped me in a big way in my television shows. It will even help me in the future, when I make films.

The experience has taught me to make a film or a show economically without wasting footage. Even on television, I know I can’t compromise on anything. I insist that nothing should go wrong on screen.

I believe that one shouldn’t compromise with one’s mistakes, but rectify them, and I religiously follow that.

Yes, it was a conscious decision. We knew that we were good at comedy. But, surprisingly, when we came up with the idea of ‘Khichdi’, it was supposed to be a light-hearted drama, just like ‘Baa Bahoo aur Baby’, with different shades, emotions and issues.

In fact, the first few episodes dealt with how a widow wore a colourful sari. But then we started getting mail from viewers, requesting us to make it into a complete comedy show and we did just that after the 11th episode.

While travelling around the world, we got to observe different kinds of people. These observations gave us ideas about the shows and their characters. I believe this is our strength.

The experience in theatres with live audiences also taught us to differentiate between what people like and what they don’t.

We wanted ‘Khichdi’ to be a very different kind of humour and that was a well thought out decision on our part. After ‘Khichdi’, we got so many calls from channels wanting us to make shows similar to ‘Khichdi’. We refused because we didn’t want to make another ‘Khichdi’.

So, after some time, we created ‘Sarabhai vs Sarabhai’. While conceptualisng this show, we were cautious about not repeating the kind of humour or situations we used in ‘Khichdi’.

(Defensively) Not at all. In fact ‘Baa Bahoo…’ is doing much better than ‘Sarabhai’. Although ‘Sarabhai…’ has been a much talked about show, it did not get very high ratings, probably because it was on a new channel, STAR One. However, the satisfaction came from the fact that the show was widely accepted by viewers from the metros.

‘Baa Bahu…’ has got a record rating of 7.75 and that’s a great feat because weekend viewing is quite limited on television. There were people who said that the show could manage a high TVR because it followed ‘KBC 2’.

But even after ‘KBC 2’ was over, the show managed to garner high TVRs. And even now, when the time slot of the show has been changed, there hasn’t been a major change in TVRs.

Yes, I do agree that there has been a slight decline in ratings, but even then, they are satisfactory.

If ‘Kyunki…’ rules on STAR Plus from Monday to Thursday, ‘Baa Bahoo aur Baby’ rules from Friday to Sunday.

Hard work is what it really takes to make successful shows. People generally make comedy shows hoping to make people laugh. Rather, one should make a comedy show for the viewers to enjoy.

The idea is to make people laugh at the concept of the show. In fact, one should never underestimate the audience. Lots of people do that and meet with failure.

The problem is that people start making comedy shows thinking they will work, which is actually secondary. The first thing is that you should enjoy making it, it’s only then that you can make your viewers laugh.

Sitcoms exist and are successful. Take the movie, ‘No Entry’, for instance. It did better than ‘Black’ in terms of money. Basically, in India, only mediocrity sells. So, to be popular, one has to come up with mediocre stuff.

In fact, most of the daily soaps are doing just that. ‘Achcha kapda pehnaya to ho gaye impress (make the actors wear glamorous costumes and the viewers are impressed)’.

It is not right. It’s not character based. Our shows are just character based. Our characters move; for them, the camera moves. The pattern of making is different.

Humour works the best. But again, only one in every ten comedy films is a success. For the illiterate and the less literate, comedy films are just to provide relief, so even movies with a low comedy quotient are entertaining. Their definition of entertainment is very different. That’s the reason why ‘Sarabhai…’ will always be less successful than a mediocre comedy show.

No, nothing like that. We are Gujaratis and we understand the culture well. And that’s why we do it really well. And we are confident about it. So, tomorrow, if I were to make a Punjabi show, I might go wrong.

We tried our hands with ‘Batliwala House No. 43’, which was based on a Parsi family, but then we changed it to a Gujarati family with ‘Kudkudiya House No. 43’. It performed better.

True. I am very much involved in the story along with Aatish (Kapadia). Whenever Aatish pens a script or sets out a screenplay or frames a character, I am involved. I always give my point of view to Aatish and it’s a collective decision. Nothing happens without my knowledge. If I miss something at the concept level, I catch up with it on the shoot or at the post-production level and make the necessary changes. It helps because I try my best to not let anything wrong go unnoticed and rectify everything possible.

No, besides STAR, we have also worked with Sony Entertainment Television (‘Kudkudiya House No. 43’), and Sahara One (‘Main Office Tere Aangan Ki’).

But then, we share a great understanding and rapport with STAR and that’s why we will always be associated with them.

At the same time, we are open to other channels. And other channels have also approached us. We may consider them for our future ventures.

Having said that, I will also say that we will always approach STAR whenever we have a new concept. Only if it doesn’t have a slot for us will we approach another channel.

STAR will always remain special for us because that was where we started.

We want to first consolidate our television programming and then foray into movies. Actually, we were ready with a script and were in talks with Aishwarya Rai and Kajol for our movie venture. Unfortunately, things did not work out. Films are very time consuming – you work the whole year and one day decides your fate. I call it the ‘Friday game’.

We would like to settle down as a television production company, have a couple of shows in hand and then look at films. By the end of this year or the beginning of next year, we plan to foray into film production. And, yes, it will be a comedy.

Nowadays, the audience turnout is more for a comedy film. I would also like to get into ad film production, but right now, our hands are full. But we will do that very soon.

We have a new show coming up on STAR One called ‘Resham Dankh’, which will go on air from August 14 at 9.30pm. It is a family drama featuring young parents and their child. It is about the changes a child brings in the family. It is a show where we have scripted a definite start and end, unlike some of our other shows.

Apart from that, I want to foray into meaningful music videos, not like the ones we see today. I want to set up a children’s acting academy in the future. I also plan to own a channel some day.

It is very difficult to keep generating fresh humour. It is not possible to create quality humour constantly. In India, there is a dearth of comedy writers. So, it is important to take a break and come back with new ideas. Otherwise, one will end up making the same kind of serials with the same plots, creating monotony and humour for the sake of humour. Even actors need to take a break.

I usually don’t comment on other shows. It’s not healthy. (On further probing). We find it difficult to make two shows and they make so many. But whatever the case, people like them. I personally don’t think it is right. But what is right or wrong is very individual. It is a different ball game altogether.

They are in the numbers game today. And I seriously doubt if they are making shows that they would really want to make.

It’s all a matter of survival and existence. But as someone in the same business, I understand what they are going through and I respect them a lot.