About Udaan Arts & Cooking Chesapeake

Udaan Arts & Cooking founder Deepika Atkinson is a woman of many talents. After running an arts business in Mumbai for 15 years, she emigrated to America, where she became a real-estate professional, a property investor, and a licensed private pilot. Atkinson blends her experience with art and the cooking skills she learned from her mother to create a diverse curriculum of hands-on classes. Students untangle the complex spices of Indian food in two-hour cooking classes devoted to dishes that include potato samosas, naan, and butter-chicken curry. Artistic talents flourish in inclusive classes running the gamut from stained glass to embroidery to fabric painting. In mehndi classes, pupils learn to apply traditional body paint to hands and arms in elaborate scrolls, filigree, or full transcriptions of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.:m]]