Sawan Dutta — the quirky and beloved Bengali singer-songwriter and vlogger — has long been known for crafting hilarious original content from the most unexpected topics. Whether it is recipes, travel tales, climate change awareness or Covid safety guidelines, she has made music out of it all. Widely recognised as ‘The Metronome’ on social media, Dutta has now taken a more serious turn with her latest Instagram series, ‘Heart Health for Dummies’, launched in February, 2025.
This time, the topic is not only unconventional — it’s also deeply personal.
In 2019, Dutta’s husband, CB Arun, suffered a massive heart attack that led to open-heart quadruple bypass surgery. That near-fatal episode opened her eyes to a crucial knowledge gap between the medical world and the average person. “There’s a huge misconception that heart disease is curable or reversible. It’s not — arteries once blocked cannot be unblocked with any degree of ease,” Dutta told My Kolkata.
Through her new series, she aims to bridge that gap and raise awareness about heart health and heart attack prevention.
“The scary part is that arterial blockages have no symptoms. You often don’t realise how blocked your arteries are until the heart attack occurs. And alarmingly, more and more young people are being affected,” she said.
While Dutta became popular for her ‘Recipe Songs’ — a collection she claims is among the largest of its kind globally — this series is not about catchy jingles. “I’m not really hell-bent on using songs as a format for sharing recipes or anything else, mainly because Instagram Reels are too short for songs, and because information on heart health is too serious and complicated to be confined to the parameters of a song,” she said.
Dutta acknowledged that before her husband’s heart attack, she had “zero understanding” of heart health. It was only after countless hours with cardiologists and post-op consultations that she started to connect the dots between food and cardiovascular health. “I had to unlearn almost everything I knew about cooking,” she admitted.
Surprisingly, she discovered that Indian kitchens are already rich in heart-healthy ingredients — turmeric, garlic, onions, nuts, seeds, lentils and millets. Her series showcases easy recipes using these staples, including a fan-favourite: heart-safe chicken biryani. She also demonstrates how to tweak common beverages like buttermilk and coffee to make them healthier.
Beyond recipes, the project is a constant learning experience for Dutta. “Creating this Heart Health for Dummies Instagram account is helping me, first and foremost, to keep adding to my knowledge and updating it, and this is knowledge that I apply to our lives every single day,” said Dutta.
She added that she uses AI tools to supplement and update her knowledge, and her AI sources collect their information from American Heart Association, European Society of Cardiology, National Institutes of Health, and medical journals.
Above all, Dutta urges people to understand that heart attacks aren’t sudden. “They’re slow and cumulative — the result of years of poor eating and unhealthy living, she emphasised.
Dutta’s content has struck a chord — followers often thank her for translating complex medical jargon into digestible, practical advice. However, her most powerful validation came offline.
“An acquaintance once told us that he was able to reach a hospital in time during a cardiac episode because of tips we had casually shared at a party. That’s when I knew I had to do this — you never know whose life it might save,” she concluded.
