Port Blair (Andaman Islands): Eleven-year-old Almas Javed is busy decorating a huge bell, which she has carved out of polystyrene, with water colour and glitter. The bell will find a place of prominence among the Christmas and New Year decorations at Mount Carmel School in Port Blair.

It's Almas's way of ringing in a colourful New Year — a complete contrast to the darkness that seemed to have engulfed her life last year. Almas lost 11 members of her family to the tsunami a day after Christmas last year.

Almas was holidaying in Nancouri in the Andamans when the tsunami struck. She watched in horror as the gigantic wave swept away 11 members of her family.

The little girl was found unconscious the next morning, clinging to a tree stump. For a week, she walked the thin line between life and death at a government hospital in Port Blair.

Doctors feared that she would die, but Almas was made of stronger stuff. She pulled through and once she went back to her grandmother's house in Port Blair, started putting the pieces of her shattered life together.

"She is a gift from god. My entire family was gone and it's a miracle she was spared. What would I have done if she had been taken away too?" says her grandmother.

And even at this tender age, Almas has shown courage and resolve way beyond her years. Displaying a rare strength of character, she forcibly pushed away memories of the tsunami just weeks after she returned to Port Blair.

"I am amazed that she takes her responsibility so seriously. Not only was she among the first 10 in her class to take the annual exams, she also never lets me feel that my entire family is gone. She has matured beyond her years," says her grandmother.

But Almas brushes away her tryst with fate with the casual flick of her little head.

"I guess people say I am brave because I was the only one the tsunami did not manage to kill. And as for not letting my grandmother feel the absence of a family - well I am her family and she is all I have. She was there when I was a child. She is still here," says she.

Almost no one can grasp the pain that Almas is going through because the little girl has chosen to live her life with a smile, not letting the tragedy of the tsunami defeat her.