The dangers of Hindi

So I'm sitting here at this trendy cafe, reading my "Chota Rajkumar" (The Little Prince). I've brought my trusty giant Hindi-English dictionary with me -- more because it's so heavy that it actually guilts me into doing my Hindi homework, having lugged it around everywhere.

Looking words up in Hindi takes me twice as long as it should, since, having mastered the actual letters, I've now forgotten what order these letters come in. So in looking up one word, I flip the pages front to back; and then back to front (repeating as necessary), until I finally come to the letter I'm looking for.

Within each letter, I go through roughly the same process. In particular, flags above and below the letters throw me off more, and I found myself spending literally about 10 minutes trying to look up "akarshak". Tyler's gone off to get his hair cut; his haircut is done and I've read about three sentences.

Frustrated and almost convinced it's just not in the dictionary, I point to the word and ask my waiter what it means.

He blushes.

Oh no.

"Maydam, it means 'attractive'," he says, blushing more and avoiding all eye contact. He smiles coyly.

Great, now the waiter thinks I'm flirting with him.

That'll show me to take the easy way out...