"Oh! little children come to me. I will teach you A,B,C."

Arif repeats the rhyme at least a dozen times.

His teacher Rouf Ahmed tells journalists visiting Charunda that there is no better song that highlights the task facing all survivors in this frontier hamlet which was reduced to rubble in the October 8 earthquake.

"Everyone is trying to start (their lives) afresh, right from A,B,C," says Ahmed as Arif's refrain is taken up by more than 50 students in the olive-green tent now serving as their school.

The 7.6-magnitude earthquake flattened some 230 houses built precariously along a ridge of a huge mountain in Charunda, which falls on the Line of Control (LOC), the demarcation that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

An Indian flag flies outside the school tent against a backdrop of peaks controlled by Pakistan.

"Eighty percent of the total 76 students have returned to the school. Others are still scared and a few are in hospital," says Ahmed.

Behind him, all the students -- from nursery school up to the eighth standard -- sit quietly in three rows inside the tent.

The quake left more than 74,000 people dead and millions homeless in Pakistan and its zone of Kashmir. Some 1,300 people died in Indian Kashmir and 150,000 people were left homeless.

The village has no motorable road and survivors entering the dense pine forests that surround the hamlet have been told to stick to tracks laid out by the Indian army. The earthquake is thought to have shifted thousands of landmines laid along the LoC by troops on both sides, who have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir.

"We had everything before the quake ... our houses, intact families and contented lives," says Jamal Udin, who lost his two daughters, aged 10 and seven, and his five-year old son in the disaster.

"This was will of Allah and what could we do?" he says, as Indian army masons give the finishing touches to a house they are building for him.

The army, officials say, has decided to "adopt" this village and will be constructing 230 small houses for survivors now living in tents and temporary sheds.

"We are helping them rebuild their shattered lives," says S. Bhardwaj, Indian army officer in charge of the sensitive area.

The houses, being built of tin, wood, stone and cement, will be quake-proof, windproof and can keep inhabitants warm despite severe winters. Each house is also being provided with electrical points which can be fed by a generator.

They are also being provided utensils, bedding and traditional kitchens, a move that is winning hearts and minds in this village.

"By giving us houses the army has done us a big favour.... prevented us from migrating," says Mohammed Din, who lost his 18-year-old daughter on October 8.

"We are learning to live again," he said, while grazing his buffalo on the quake-damaged ridge.

The villagers claim they have received no government help so far, not even the cash assistance announced last month.

"Whatever help has come, has come from the army," said Mathu Jinder, 70, while waiting for an army doctor to carry out a check-up on two grandsons injured in the quake.

Both on crutches, Jinder's grandsons -- Mohammed Arif, six and Shabir Ahmed, eight -- said they would soon return to the village school. They too wanted to join in the chanting of the alphabet rhyme.

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