The problem with asking questions is, sooner or later, you’ll receive answers.

The problem with receiving answers is, sooner or later, you’ll be required to do something with them.

**

Mar-Apr ‘06

Two years ago, to help out with someone else’s project, I started intense research on a project we simply titled “Food.” It was suggested that we come up with something more glamorous, more inspiring, more salable, but I protested vehemently against changing it. “Food” to me, was simple. Something the project itself, was not.

For several sleepless weeks, I uncovered facts, statistics, data about various agricultural systems in the world, the role of the World Trade Organization, farmer’s rights, pricing and who controls it, McDonald’s, starving children in Africa, rice production in China and possibly everything else you might think of when you hear the word “food.”

Fortunately, I wrote and re-wrote several 1,000-word proposals to make sense of what I was saying, the point I was trying to make, and how it all tied together. Unfortunately, I was the only one who was able to.

The problem was, that in a subject so complex, there was one question to which I hadn’t been able to find an answer. And since I was still questioning, the proposal lacked that hard “I can prove it” factor without which a big budget would be out of the question.

The project got shelved. I threw my thousands of pages worth of research into a folder and thrust it into some neglected corner of my hard drive. I dumped the hundreds of dollars worth of books that I’d later bought in an attempt to find an answer to that question to the back of my bookshelf and proceeded to move on to other projects. A year went by.

**

March ‘07

I stood at the newsstand tapping my foot impatiently while I waited for the guy to give me back my change. I needed to pay the autorickshaw guy who didn’t have any and this was the only way to do it. I bought an old copy of Nat Geo from 1997.

“Take this one, too,” the guy thrust another one in my face. “It’s the last one I have and if you take two, I’ll give a better price.”

“Oh, all right,” I said impatiently. I had to meet someone, I was late, and you can’t really go wrong with Nat Geo.

Back home, one day before I was to leave for Calcutta, I finally looked at the covers of the Nat Geo’s. “Food.” I flipped over to the 10-page feature, reading through it, knowing this was similar to what I had written, wanting to see if the writer had answered my question.

Nope. It was similar to the stuff that I researched; it focused on the how, but not my why.

**

It’s a small village near Calcutta and I was accompanying a theater troupe that I was writing about. People from a foreign aid organization had been working there already, and had decided to stay to check out the performance.

After the play, my interviews done, I walked over to a silent spot to stare at the lush green fields in front of me.

Two minutes later, I was joined by a German woman, one of the first foreigners to have ever come to this village.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” I asked as I turned to leave, not really expecting an answer. This was the same woman, who fifteen minutes ago had rudely told me to tell my photographer not to take pictures of her, even though he had no intention of doing so.

“Yeah,” she grunted, partly sad. “For how long, I wonder.”

“Really?” I said, now intrigued. “Why is that?”

“Well, all this damage that they’re doing to the land with all this new technology.”

Oh. One of those moral types.

“I’m sorry,” I began, partly because The Question surfaced in my head again, and partly because I was still pissed at her. “But these ‘modern’ agricultural techniques that you speak of are actually helping these farmers financially and I don’t think you or I have the right to sit on our moral high horses and pretend like it’s what they want.” And I proceeded to throw in some knowledge that I’d accumulated, in a witty attempt to get back at her for insulting me earlier.

This startled her. “What do you do?” she asked. “How do you know all this?”

“Writer,” I said. “Did some research last year. You?”

“Scientist. Food research. Wanna sit?”

Fifteen minutes later, I had The Answer.

**

What am I going to do with it? Hell, who knows. It found its way to me. It’ll find its way out.

(March ‘08 update: I now have about a dozen contacts who can talk intelligently about what I’d been researching and have answered my questions. I still have no idea if or what I’m going to do with all the information.)