The Rooftop Gardens That Fed a Neighborhood Through the Hot Months

JAKARTA — The dispute on Gang Mawar is settled every autumn and reopened every autumn, and this year is no different: whose tomatoes won. Across the low roofs of the neighborhood, where the heat of the past months made the streets unlivable at midday but made the rooftops, improbably, into gardens, the harvest is coming in — bright racks of tomatoes and long beans and chili, grown in the cruel sun that drove everyone else indoors. What began years ago as a scarcity measure, families growing what the markets couldn't reliably deliver, has ripened into something closer to sport. Every roof has a champion grower, a secret shade-cloth technique, a rivalry two doors long. Mrs. Suryani claims the block record and will show you the vine. Her neighbor, unmoved, claims the record is a matter of interpretation. The heat that made the gardens necessary is finally letting go, and the neighborhood is doing what it does best with a good harvest — eating half of it and arguing cheerfully about the rest. "The tomatoes are how we know we made it through," Mrs. Suryani said. "Also, mine are better."