Chitra Ramaswamy: 'Decades on . . . my sister remains the boss'

SOME things don't change. My sister, Tiny-but-Deadly, and I are on holiday in southern Spain. She is three years older than me. I am thirty inches taller than her.

We are both adults, well, according to our passports. Yet decades on from her military instructions on where to press my Tiny Tears' belly so that pee would shoot out of its hip joint in the bath, my sister remains the boss of me.

T-but-D and I no longer take baths together, but in life it's clear who holds the bar of soap. And the remote. And the boarding cards. And the cash.

And, let's be honest, the common sense. Things were much easier during bathtime. At least then I had a lethal weapon. Yes, like all younger siblings, I had the number two. If my sister for example insisted on giving Mr Matey his bubble beard again I knew what to do.

Smile, do my business beneath the surf, then sit back and admire my handiwork as the floater surfaced like a shark fin and bobbed over to my screaming sister. (At this point play the 'duh-duh, duh-duh' Jaws music in your head for added effect.) Simple times. Now floaters won't do, and that's why we call this phase adulthood. But it's not really so different.

So, lunch in Seville's cathedral square. It's 42 degrees and I'm hot, fretful and about two Cruzcampo beers short of a tantrum so grand it would put the Giralda, the world's largest gothic cathedral, in the shade.

If there was any shade. T-but-D, as always in the hallucinogenic midday sun, is thriving. She looks as settled as a lizard on a stone. "I'm too hot," I whine. She regards me, lizard-like, without turning her head. "Do you need the toilet before we go?" I nod meekly.

Afterwards we walk to the bus station. T-but-D charges ahead, taking to the shimmering white heat like a mountain goat, overtaking cyclists, cars, mowing a few down.

I lag behind, the weakling Beth to her Little Women's Jo. Every so often she stops, waits for me to catch up. It's only when we arrive I realise I've left my camera behind. T-but-D marches me back to the square. When we get there I turn to her. "Can you ask for me?"

I'm not usually this much of a simpleton. When C and I are on holiday, I'm the lizard. I can hold on to my belongings. Judge my own bladder. But as soon as I get within following distance of my sister I go puppyish. Meanwhile, she gets stronger.

It was ever thus with sisters. Charlotte Bronte surely admired Wuthering Heights, but great genius aside, I bet she found Emily's habit of copying the way she tied her bonnet, like, so annoying.

And I can imagine Kylie turning to her mini-Minogue in the Eighties and saying with as withering a look you can get with a perm the size of Ramsay Street: "Danielle, if you really want to make it in my world stick two 'i's on your name and get on Home and Away. I'm only saying this for your own good." And you know what? She was right.

• This article was first published in The Scotland on Sunday, June 13, 2010