Dirty diapers don't matter when they're attached to a new baby. And Mary Kaye and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. were still in wonder Wednesday about their

1-year-old daughter, Asha.

After a noisy, exhausting day in Gujarat, the rural western state where she was born, Asha slept eight hours, rubbed her eyes and looked up at her parents.

"I just melted," said Mary Kaye Huntsman.

Asha's life is in transition. She got a visa to visit the United States pasted into her Indian passport. Her immunizations are current. A pediatrician declared her well to travel - even giving her parents a concoction to help her sleep during the 20-hour trip home to Utah. Some of the food she has tried doesn't agree with her.

Those are the practical details. Emotions are more complicated. She still responds to the name the nuns in the orphanage called her - Kanak. She clings to whoever holds her - but most of all to her 18-year-old sister, Liddy. She doesn't want to be set down. It will take awhile for her to feel secure.

But all that will pass. More quickly, the Huntsmans hope, after they get home Friday. It's Christmastime, after all. And although three of her siblings are here in India, her two oldest sisters and oldest brother are eager to meet her.

Before the time comes to leave India, the Huntsmans are trying to absorb as much of their daughter's birthplace as possible.

"We're taking in the country that Asha comes from," said the governor. "The culture becomes a lot more relevant in your lives. You're a lot more cognizant of what India is and what Asha is."

In many ways, that means learning to love a country of heartbreaking contrasts. India's growing middle class is overshadowed by unending poverty. Despite nurturing the world's largest democracy, a film industry to rival Hollywood, intricate handcrafts and delectable spicy cuisine, Indian culture casts off unmarried pregnant women and their children with alarming alacrity. Asha was left by the side of the road hours after her birth. Rather than pick her up, villagers called police.

"There is no identity for single parents," said Jagannath Pati, public information officer for the Central Adoption Resource Agency, matter-of-factly.

Asha's new siblings have been shellshocked by their experience. Liddy wants to work in the country one day. Will, 14, and Gracie Mei, 7, have been wide-eyed.

"They were very quiet" after leaving Asha's orphanage, said Mary Kaye Huntsman.

"The kids will long remember this," added the governor. "Having a sister who comes from these circumstances, they'll think twice. It gives you a common sense of humanity. It's a real lesson for life."

After dealing with the bureaucracy of international adoption Wednesday, the Huntsmans ventured out into a Delhi market, gently turning away the beggars who follow tourists, searching for beaded slippers and silk saris for the girls and women in the family.

They have become celebrities of a sort. The Times of India, the largest newspaper in the world, featured several stories about Asha's adoption. And International Broadcasting Network, CNN's partner in India, played and replayed video footage of the family. As a result, they were stopped on the street by several Indians who had seen the story.

Ati Yazaki stroked Asha's face and congratulated the Huntsmans.

Asha is just one of about 1,000 Indian orphans adopted each year by non-Indians - and just over 300 adopted by American parents. Within the country, about 2,000 orphans are adopted by Indian families, according to CARA, the government office that oversees orphanages. Pati said the country is still "compiling" a tally of the number of abandoned children and a list of the institutions they live in.

For the Huntsmans' daughter, her new home will be much grander - a governor's mansion. The weather will be much colder. And instead of nuns doting on her, she has a crew of older siblings.

As the IBN reporter said, she has a "new life of hope and the chance to live the American dream."

For the cameras, the governor predicted his daughter would return someday as the U.S. ambassador to India. He was only half-joking.

walsh@sltrib.com