How do I handle gender agreement with inanimate objects in Hindi?

I’m planning my first business trip to India and I’m terrified of misgendering common objects while ordering food or asking for directions. It seems like 'chai' is feminine and 'pani' is masculine, but I constantly forget the others. Is there any trick to identifying the gender of a noun just by looking at the word, or do I just have to brute-force memorize the gender of every single noun I learn?