'Sure, it's a race against time,' says K. Damayanti, 35. 'But unless we have proper shelters during the monsoon, we won't be able to rebuild our lives again.'

Ms Damayanti earns 150 rupees ($26) a day for her work at the construction site, twice the usual wage for labourers in Hut Bay. She is one of several tsunami victims employed by Seeds, a New Delhi-based NGO specialising in disaster management which is charged with building this particular cluster of homes.

Her gold bangles and earrings are the only valuables left from her previous life. Everything else was swept away by the tsunami - her three-room house, four cows, three goats, a TV, a radio, a kitchen mixer, all the possessions painstakingly accumulated over 15 years of hard work and thrifty living.

But her three children and husband, a government forestry employee, survived.

Her family's story mirrors the fate of Hut Bay. Almost everything in the port town has been destroyed - but only 72 residents of the entire island perished, with 14 listed as missing.

Built mostly on low-lying ground, the town still looks like it has been carpet bombed, three months after the disaster. Only the odd building has been left standing amid the rubble.

The two massive jetties in the harbour, the port installations, the hospital, the main Catholic church, schools, roads, and hundreds of houses and commercial establishments are all beyond repair.

There is no rancour or reproach when Ms Damayanti talks of life after the disaster. 'My elder girl, she's 13 and good at school, and she loves studying English,' Ms Damayanti says, her eyes sparkling with pride.

'She wants to grow up and become a computer professional, and my husband and I would like to ensure that all three children get a good education and achieve something in life.'

The family currently lives under canary-yellow plastic sheeting. Standing in a barren clearing in a primordial rainforest, Ms Damayanti's dream of renewal seems like an impossible fantasy.

But she does not look like a quitter. Like almost everyone else in Hut Bay, Ms Damayanti is a hardy settler from the Indian mainland 1,200km to the west.

'The settlers made Hut Bay a prosperous place,' says Sunil Kumar, the New Delhi-appointed dehsildar, or town chief.

'But what's really amazing is that despite the town getting devastated by the tsunami, no one is saying they'll go back to the mainland.'

Little Andaman Island, measuring about 25km by 18km, is a tropical paradise that for centuries was exclusively populated by a small band of Stone Age aborigines, known as the Onge. But in the 1960s, New Delhi decided to colonise the island and exploit its timber wealth.

In addition to mainland settlers, hundreds of Nicobarese, also members of an ancient tribe, were brought to Little Andaman from Car Nicobar Island.

As for the Onges, who today number just 104, they were squeezed into two settlements at the north and south of Little Andaman. Not a single Onge died on December 26, a fact attributed by some anthropologists to their knowledge of ancient lore which saw them retreat to the forests after the earthquake.

Hut Bay is well located. It is on the southernmost island in the Andaman chain, roughly at the middle of the 726km Andaman and Nicobar archipelago. It is thus en route to the Nicobar islands, where India has two military bases.

The town began exporting timber, copra (dried coconut) and betel nut north to the archipelago's capital, Port Blair, for shipment to the Indian mainland, and vegetables and other agricultural produce south to Car Nicobar and beyond.

It soon became something of an El Dorado for immigrants who streamed in from the mainland, possessing little other than the determination to work hard and make something of their lives.

'I'm sure that within two or three years Hut Bay will be back to normal,' says town chief Mr Kumar, referring to the enterprise of the immigrants.

Little Andaman is the southernmost island in the archipelago that foreigners are permitted to visit, so Hut Bay even attracts backpackers lured by a beautiful beach and coral reefs north of the town.

Raja Verghese and his wife Kunjumol were to open the Sealand Tourist Home on December 31, in time to catch the peak tourist season.

A migrant from Kerala state, Mr Verghese had built up a substantial business over the years. He was a civil contractor, owned an spare-parts shop, and hired out a truck, a jeep and a car.

But thanks to the tsunami, the Vergheses now live in their beachside guesthouse rather than hosting tourists, having lost everything else they owned.

Mr Verghese is grim-faced, but he has not given up. He has a contract to clear the debris from a government installation opposite his guesthouse, and has even hired an elephant to do the job.

'My husband speaks little these days, but he doesn't rest,' says Ms Verghese. 'He has only one thought in mind - rebuild the business.'

Dhanraj, who goes by one name like many in the islands, is barely 12 years old, but he doesn't rest either.

Along with his friend, Bisharath Kumar, he scours the ruins of Hut Bay for galvanised iron which he beats with a hammer and folds into small, twisted bundles that he sells to a Port Blair businessmen for 30 rupees per kilogram.

'My father can't work, he's [mentally handicapped],' said Dhanraj. 'My grandmother, who had a shop, looked after us, but now it's all gone.'

Dhanraj is dressed in a school uniform - the little scavenger is also taking school exams. Asked what he intends to do when he grows up, he does not hesitate. 'I want to be a computer engineer,' he says. Even in remote Hut Bay, India's IT success has clearly cast its spell over the young.

But the town's only internet cafe was swept away by the tsunami. A computer training centre established by India's space research organisation fared better, though 11 of its 12 computers were washed away, along with a satellite receiver. 'We had enrolled 23 students in the first one-year computer applications course, which began last year,' says the centre's Arun Kumar Mondal. 'People here are very curious about IT.'

Hut Bay may be remote, but its people clearly want to get connected.

M. Ram Kumar's Chennai Fancy Store was swallowed up by the sea, but the 28-year-old businessman, a migrant who came from Tamil Nadu in 1998, is not one to give up easily. He has set up shop under a tarpaulin, selling all manner of goods. 'Business is okay,' he says. His biggest seller: cheap transistor radios, made in China, which retail for between 150 and 300 rupees.

Hut Bay was seized from a Stone Age tribe, transformed by the labour of impoverished settlers, and destroyed by the fury of nature. Now it must re-emerge from the rubble.

'We've been pushed back 30 years,' says Augustine, a teacher supervising exams at an open-air school in Hut Bay's Nicobarese enclave of Harmander Bay. But he is in no doubt. 'We will start again.'