SITARAM KESRI was all warm and gracious when Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda came calling on him for a pre-midnight lobby session on October 30. Gowda wanted the big-brothers continued "blessings and guidance". What that means, shorn of euphemism, is that the minority United Front Government has realised it cant take blanket support from the Congress too much for granted. And if one sees Gowda visiting Kesri far more often than Narasimha Rao these days, that only confirms the rising stature of the latest septuagenarian to lord it over the Congress. Kesri is clearly consolidatingmaking good use of the natural default advantage he got as a successor to the unpopular and tainted Rao.