Power Paradox
Power Paradox
I am Narayana Pillai. I like stories like all human beings do. I grew up in an era without any digital distractions, listening to the stories told by my grandmother.
we all are storytelling creatures.
we also create emotional connection or empathy through stories. We need stories to spice up our life.
I grew up in a small town near Kanchipuram.
My father had a small local publication "Jai hind publications" which he got from his dad who used to print pamphlets during the independence era.
I used to travel with him around the town to get interesting stories for the magazine.
The publication was failing down.
when I started my research on how to pull the audience in, I came across two things.
One is, how as humans we are drawn toward depressing stories.
The second one is adding spice. I took Pulitzer as an example.
Pulitzer turns news articles into stories with a plot, actors, conflict, and colourful details.
When I stepped in following these two rules. I changed the name to "Global focus" I started to make stories more dramatic by adding blaring headlines, big pictures, and eye-catching graphics.
My work involves constant acts of storytelling, from teasing and gossip to the narratives of successes and failures we tell to illuminate and inspire one another.
The publication starts to gain more audience with more profits coming in.
I got married to Archana, who was my friend in school, and a girlfriend of my friend.
I really liked her English. she became a teacher when I stood here in publication.
she rejected my proposal twice. But after the publication grew, his dad agreed to the marriage but she didn't. we never had any good relationship.
I had success in everything but not in that. Power and storytelling are always intertwined.
once I start to feel powerful my attention shifts to news media. I found that media and government should work in handy to manipulate people.
so I dramatize fabricated news to make it into a problem, and government officials respond to the problem.
So people will get a good impression of the politician. when I started to meet new people, and travel to new places, Archana sensed something in me and she left with our son. And never came back.
Yes, I have slept with more women than you could think but it is not why she left. I still couldn't get it.
Politicians or the interviewer will be given the scripts before being interviewed so they will literally be performing like an artist.
I can make them dance, crack jokes, cry..I literally can do anything. they are my puppets.
I started to prepare a narrative for the politicians during the election. My power overgrew the government.
I can literally change the government with a single piece of news.
when the digital era began, I literally could sense the world under my feet.
My growth and downfall, both happened with storytelling.
I rose in power when my stories had empathy, engaging with people, especially my particular-genius storytelling.
As the power grew over me, I stopped prioritising others' interests and become concerned with gratifying my own desires and my stories become vulnerable to a lack of empathy that divides and humiliate others.
people call it the "power paradox" it states that, the very skills that help us attain power vanish once we feel powerful.
One thing which haunts me when I am lying on the bed with bullet wounds is not the fear of death, or the pain from my bullet wounds but a smile from my father during my downfall.
This is the smile he had when he stepped out of publication and I stepped in.