Pax Feminica - A Synopsis

 PAX FEMINICA – A SYNOPSIS

Pax Feminica takes off from Germaine Greer’s comment that ‘a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle’. It imagines a society where there are no men, and where women do (almost) everything, and asks - how could such a society possibly come about? What would its norms be? Would it survive?

Two not particularly young men, one the protagonist of this novel VV and the other the narrator Shankar Bhalla, accidentally stumble upon a women-only society in the higher Himalayas. The book describes their years spent within, where they get involved in its debates, tussles and tensions, take sides in a civil war, and even fall in love. Many of the issues faced by this primitive community are contemporary and would strike a chord in any modern society – the quest for equity and justice, the need to balance expenditure with revenues, the tensions between the centralized state and decentralized units of government, and the stresses around including or excluding ‘others’, with the important difference being that women hold all the reigns of power here.

Part 1 of the book (chapters 1 to 4) introduces the protagonist and sets the context for the rest of the book. It takes the reader through to the point at which the two men find themselves in an unknown part of mountains.

Part 2 (chapters 5 to 7) describes their time with a community of minstrels and medicine men and introduces Nawang, a medicine man who is by their side through much of the rest of the book. It also introduces two adversarial agricultural communities, the Khampa, who had settled here since time immemorial but had been ousted by more recent migrants into the area, and who were now involved in an insurgent campaign to regain their lands, and the Takmo/Dregovichi, migrants from the north who had ousted them and who are an aggressive women-only society. It ends at the point at which VV, Bhalla and Nawang receive a summons from the Takmo Governor.

Part 3 (chapters 8 to 12) recounts the time spent with the Takmo/Dregovichi in one of their provinces, describes the life there, and explores the possibility of peace and prosperity by integrating the Khampa into the provincial economy. It introduces the governor, Dazhda, who VV subsequently falls in love with, and the head of one of the Dregovichi villages, Perunia, with whom Bhalla has a short but pleasant liaison. It ends at the point at which the leader of the Dregovichi community, at their central headquarters, summons the two men.

Part 4 (chapters 13 to 17) recounts the time spent at the Dregovichi headquarters. The circumstances under which the community migrated here, in the aftermath of the Mongol invasion of Europe in the 13^th century, and the reasons for their harsh social norms that have no place for men, are explained at this stage. The tensions between the headquarters and the province in which the men had stayed earlier are described here.

Part 5 (chapters 18 and 19) describe the simmering of differences between the headquarters and the province, and the discontent that serves as a prelude to civil war.

Part 6 (chapters 20 to 23) describes the civil war, the two men’s return to the community of minstrels and medicine men to escape the fighting, and the subsequent return of the narrator to the outside world. It ends at the point the narrator makes it back to an Indian border police check post.

The book, though a work of fiction, borrows heavily from fact, especially relating to the western campaigns of the Mongol Army in 1221-23 and 1237-42, and from the work of philosophers such as Rawls, von Hayek, and Olsen and military strategists such as Sun Tzu, von Motke and von Clausewitz.