It has been ten years ago when my life started to be spiced up by Indian chatnis, asanas and kahaniyan. Following my interest in Indian society, I joined the Indology department at Charles University in Prague as a complementation study subject to my Sociology. As I studied Indian linguistics, history, politics and literature, I was more and more positive that the most interesting, fascinating & mystifying topic within Indian subcontinent studies is social issues, which allow rising numerable questions about human rights, underprivileged classes and particularly position of women. For years I have dreamt about working for an NGO in India and putting my bookish knowledge on India in practice…
My time came in the winter 2005 when I joined CSR to participate in a child rape research. And well, this time experience was completely unusual and incomparably deep in comparison with my previous tourist sojourns to India. Of course, India gives a day after day opportunity to everyone to fight for its place in the sun but to disclose its intrinsical joys too. That is what I experienced till the bottom in the office and out of it indeed.
From the very beginning, I appreciated very friendly and comfortable environment in the CSR where both jokes as well as working enthusiasm were not missing. I have learned here a lot about hidden aspects of Indian life and society and found answers for some of my questions. True, thinking every day about the children being raped threw some unwanted shadows on my general perception of Indian society, but fortunately it always disappeared soon…
It was a phenomenal experience for me to be a part of Indian working team and observe how things can be done or not. So far, half a year is a long time to see but little time to learn enough. I believe I haven’t got all that I had asked for but that what I really needed. Thank you.

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