Talat Mahmood, Manna Dey,[1][2][3] C. H. Atma,[4][5] Anup Jalota,[6] Dilraj Kaur, Shailendra Singh,[7][8][9] Shyam Lala, Mukesh[10] and others.
[12][13][15] Although Pardesi's father Sheikh Sahib Ali built his new home in Jaunpur and settled there permanently but he did not succeed in arranging any regular source of income for the family.
[13] The changed circumstances of life without any concrete source of income along with the responsibility of an unmarried sister, two orphaned nieces, a wife and a son were too harsh for a 23/24-year young man who had lived his childhood and adolescence in luxuries.
[13][14] Consequently, the necessities of life prevailed over self-respect and eventually he landed up at his father-in-law Hafiz Akhtar Ali's place, who was a well- known farmer of village Jamdahan in Jaunpur district.
[15] In Mumbai, he stayed for almost 8 years and by the time he grounded his feet in this city of hopes, he had a serious attack of heart palpitation (Ikhtelaj-e-Qalb) that made him virtually bed ridden and consequently he was left with no option but constrainedly to come back to his father-in-law's house in Jamdahan.
However, later on his son, Nadeem Ahmad tried to collect as many of his writings as he could and published them under the following four titles:[18] Sheikh Mohammed Irfan alias Shaukat Pardesi was a poet, lyricist and journalist.
He was born in Malaysia where his father Sheikh Sahib Ali had migrated from Maroofpur village in Jaunpur district of India.
He wrote songs for three films namely Khubsoorat,[26] Ghulam Begam Badshah,[27] and Shaheed-e-Aazam Bhagat Singh that were sung by Mohammed Rafi,[14][28] and Asha Bhosale.
A number of Pardesi's ghazals and nazms were recorded by HMV in the voices of some of the famous singers of his time like Talat Mahmood,[14][30] Manna Dey,[31] C. H. Atma, Anup Jalota, Dilraj Kaur, Shailendra Singh, Shyam Lala and Mukesh.
[10] In particular, his ghazal "Hairan hoon aei sanam ki tujhe aur kya kahoon" in the voice of Manna Dey became especially popular.