India, Nov. 1 -- "I come from a very simple, humble background." K Sivakumar's every sentence was punctuated by inconsolable tears. "Please forgive me if I get emotional." I had reached out to the former CFO of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) after being moved like hundreds of thousands of other Indians on reading his now viral Linkedin post. Sivakumar's 34-year-old daughter Akshaya died all of a sudden - without any forewarning of illness or tests - from a brain haemorrhage, from what was most likely an aneurysm. When he spoke of his daughter, he spoke with the pride of so many self-made, middle-class Indians who have often struggled and worked extraordinarily hard, clawing their way up the social and economic ladder so that they may give their children a better life than their own. And so it was with Akshaya Sivakumar, who graduated from IIT Madras and IIM Ahmedabad, spent 11 years in the corporate sector, including several at Goldman Sachs, and had grown into a life so secure, unlike that of her parents early years, that she could now afford to indulge her real interests. "She was a quizzer," Sivakumar told me. "She would travel all across India conducting quizzes and she loved origami," he said before his voice trailed into tears again. But if nothing had prepared Sivakumar and his wife for losing their child in the prime of her life, what happened next was appalling and bone-chilling. Whether it was the morgue, the ambulance, the cremation ground or the police, Sivakumar was faced with brazen corruption, a bureaucratic and hostile system and demands for bribes, big and small, at every step. Given that his daughter had died from natural causes, he could not figure out why the police were involved or why there was an FIR or why there was any space for the cops to be around, leave alone why they would be high-handed with a grieving father. Sivakumar, a chartered accountant by training, rattled off the list of bribes he was asked to pay: Rs.5,000 to the ambulance driver to move the body, Rs.2,000 to the city corporation office to get the death certificate after a few days of struggle, Rs.10,000 to the police at Bellandur police station to allow the post mortem, another Rs.5,000 to be handed over the report. At one point, he told me, two jeeps filled with policemen arrived at his residence, sending a wave of panic through his family and relatives. An argument broke out at home. His family did not want Sivakumar to be raising these issues in public. They were scared of a backlash and consequences. "We are small people, Madam. anyone can do anything." He reminded me of the case of Indian Oil Corporation employee S Manjunath, an IIM Lucknow graduate, who was killed for exposing corruption and taking on the oil mafia. Manjunath was 27, when he was shot at a petrol station where he had come to collect samples and report oil adulteration. Sivakumar recounted the incident and said his family urged him to delete the original post from Linkedin. By then, however, his words had gone viral, spreading far and wide. The city's commissioner of police called him to apologise for what happened. Two policemen have been suspended asking for and accepting bribes. At the time of writing this, the Greater Bangalore Authority is yet to take action against its officials and nor is there any response from the crematorium officials. Sivakumar explained that he was so overcome by grief for his daughter that he did not have the energy or the emotional bandwidth to do anything but cough up the money he was being asked for. "I could pay it," he said, "What will a poor man do?" Between tears, the distraught father told me that he felt he had "lost everything; now the least I can do is to try and help and change society". He understandably was alternating between anger and anguish, fear and fortitude. Eventually, before his struggle was over, a former colleague high up the chain at BPCL stepped in to help him. "The attitude of the same police completely changed after that," he told me. "They were so arrogant and threatening earlier and now, because they received a phone call from someone, they were trying to be nice." The familiar Indian syndrome of pull and connections had reared its ugly head. That's all that finally worked. There is a reason that Sivakumar's tragic and heartbreaking account has touched a chord across the country. People are sharing their own struggles and desperate choices. The normalisation of bribery for basic services is the staggering and inconvenient truth of this horrible incident. Nearly everyone has been in a Sivakumar-like situation or knows someone who has. Perhaps, they haven't been coping with the loss of a child at the same time, which is what has given this enormously poignant tale its pathos. The story of Akshaya Kumar and the dreams of a self-made middle-class family, who made sure their daughter could dare to dream, contains the best of India. In what happened to her parents after her death, we see a reflection of our worst. I had no words to offer to K Sivakumar except to say: Your daughter would have wanted you to find a way to keep living, keep going. My words sounded like an empty consolation, even to me....