late 90s rao managed to land 11 development deals with practically every tv network on the lookout for childrens programming fox network later hired rao and his writing partners to be the executive producers of their interstitial programming the shows between shows on their family channel meanwhile animation director mike milo was developing a cartoon series around the idea of a multiethnic school buried among the students was a minor character called swaroop who caught the eye of linda simenskay the vicepresident of development at the cartoon network simenskay whom rao describes as artist friendly introduced him to milo and asked if the two of them could come up with a show based on the swaroop character together they fleshed out a few ideas and came up with a show that rao then pitched to the executives as he told them this would be a real indian show not indian sidekicks no indian caricatures but indian characters with some dimension to them but it would be really funny its respectful and yet it would have cultural content in spite of a small budget rao insisted on using a sound track featuring live indian musicians who had to be paid union scale that was a hard one for everyone to swallow but i think everyone is happy with what we came up with he said the sevenminute cartoon took two years to make rao working hard to make sure the animators accurately captured the look and feel of an indian household even at one point having milo wrapped in a sari to get him to understand how it should be drawn in addition to being the writer and producer rao also provided the voice for swaroop adopting his point of view his feelings and just playing a tenyearold kid he admitted in showing it to other kids they found it believable bovine bliss made its debut on the cartoon network on july 27 during its cartoon premiere weekend other cartoons were premiering on the network that day and was up against some really tough competition but the feedback that they received was good people saying positive things about it rao said meanwhile a canadian company has hired him to write a number of scripts for their hoze hounds cartoon and he is already working on an outline for a bollywood parody which he says will be an austin powers kind of comedy targeting both american and indian audiences hes also received an offer from a canadian company to write a sitcom about indians in canada itll be a little more hard hitting than swaroop a little more issue oriented rao contended but swaroop is one of those rare occasions in which something that i care about something that comes from my soul has actually seen the light of day