A road runs through a village in Tamil Nadu in southern India. This road is a frontier that divides habitats, and it is a gateway to a wider world, the nearby industrial city, a means of possible emancipation for some, but the enslavement of others by the spatial segregation of castes in these rural areas of southern India. Between 2019 and 2022, four dalits (former “untouchables”) reveal their ongoing struggle to survive: over-indebtedness, poor working conditions in the sugar cane fields and brick factories, domestic and social violence, discrimination and political unrest. These four characters from the same village, with their intertwined destinies, describe their daily lives through intimate and rare testimonies, which form a life journey around three extraordinary years marked by an international pandemic and its harsh economic and social consequences in rural India. Fragile lives on one side of the road, a partition of territory that emancipates, separates and brings together all at once.