Huntsmans welcome little Asha

A tired but happy Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said Wednesday he felt "the nerves and jitteriness of an expectant father" after he and his wife adopted a 1-year-old from an orphanage in rural India just a day earlier.

"It's a real responsibility," the governor told the Deseret Morning News in a telephone interview as the new daughter they've named Asha Bharati fussed noisily nearby. "Here we take this little girl from a Catholic orphanage in Hindu society and work to make that transition to a completely different culture."

The governor and first lady Mary Kaye Huntsman, who brought three of Asha's six new siblings with them to India -- Gracie Mei, the 7- year-old they adopted as a baby in China, and teenagers Elizabeth and William -- are scheduled to return to Utah on Friday.

At the Matru Chhaya orphanage, run by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Anne in Nadiad, a small city in India's western Gujarat state, the family got a taste of the culture Asha is leaving behind through a special ceremony marking her departure.

They shared the event, which included a performance by native dancers as well as a speech by the governor, with reporters and photographers from a number of India's media outlets.

A photo of the governor holding his new daughter appeared on the Web site of one of India's leading English-language daily newspapers, The Times of India. The Huntsmans also were pictured with Asha on the Web site of Divya Bhaskar, a Hindu newspaper in nearby Ahmedabad.

In every photo, Utah's first family has a bright red marking on their foreheads, just like Asha's. The marking, sometimes called a bindi, is worn by Hindus to show their faith. In the Huntsmans' case, it was part of the adoption ceremony at Asha's orphanage.

Huntsman said he told the children, nuns and others gathered for the ceremony why the family had chosen to name their latest member Asha. The word means "hope" in Hindu, he said, "something everyone is in search of. It's clearly what the sisters in the orphanage were trying to provide."

And, Huntsman said, he hopes that as Asha "becomes American, she will also be able to maintain some of the Hindu values that were part of her first year of life."

The family donated $10,000 to the orphanage, he said, and also promised the sisters in charge that they would be invited to attend Asha's wedding.

Adopting Asha, the governor said, "really puts life in very human terms. It's cool to be elected governor and that was certainly a highlight in my life, but it's extraordinary to be able to give a life to a younger person who wouldn't have one" otherwise.

Huntsman said he's been encouraged by e-mails from Indians who have read about the adoption, such as a man who wrote that if everyone who was able embraced the responsibility for a child abandoned as Asha was, there would be no need for orphanages.

Mary Kaye Huntsman described the day she and her husband finally saw the baby they had been trying to adopt for much of the past year as "the most magical, wonderful day. You didn't want it to end, but to see her little face this morning. ... She's precious."

The first lady, too, said she wants Asha to know where she came from, a land of poverty but also joy.

"You walk outside the orphanage and you see the sheer poverty," she said. "You also see a lot of people smiling. Despite their circumstances, they find happiness. Maybe that's something all of us can take to heart."

E-mail: lisa@desnews.com

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