Three consonants carry one idea: reaching toward something you want. To ask, to request, to seek, to be in demand. The same three letters give you the polite "please" you say a dozen times a day and the economist's word for market demand. This root lives almost entirely in pi'el, the intensive binyan, because asking is an active, directed effort. Every word here is verified against pealim, niqqud included.
The same root runs through the verb system. Each binyan is a voice: it bends the one idea into active, passive, causative or reciprocal. Tap to hear.
There is no simple pa'al here: in Modern Hebrew "to want/ask" is built straight in the intensive pi'el. The hitpa'el turns it reflexive-passive, "to be the one asked of", which is why מבוקש (wanted, in demand) feels so natural.
Same root letters, different noun moulds (mishkalim). The mould tells you the function: who does it, the act of doing it, or the thing produced.
Strip the prefixes, suffixes and vowels. Three consonants remain, and the meaning lives there.