Sheikh Mohammed Irfan alias Shaukat Pardesi was born in 1924 in Malaysia where his father Sheikh Sahib Ali had migrated for living from Maroofpur village of Jaunpur district. In 1936, he came to India with his parents and lived in Lucknow for two years and studied in Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulma. Afterwards, he moved to Jaunpur with his parents and completed his middle school education from Mission School (now known as Raj College). In 1943, Shaukat Pardesi was married to Husnaara Begum. A couple of years later his parents died and household responsibilities fell on his shoulders. He tried many things for living but did not succeed. Consequently, he landed up at his father-in-law Hafiz Akhtar Ali’s place in village Jamdahan of Jaunpur district. However, somehow his stay in Jamdahan did not lost long and in 1950, he went to Mumbai where he got associated with Urdu daily Inquilab for some time, acted as Editor of Films Times Weekly, wrote songs and dialogues for few films and published and edited “Munna”, a monthly Urdu magazine for children. In 1958, he suffered serious attacks of heart palpitation that made him virtually bed ridden and as a result he came back to his father-in-law’s place in Jamdahan and spent rest of his life there. He died in 1995 out of cancer.   

Shaukat Pardesi was a well published poet in almost all the known Urdu magazines and periodicals, especially during fifties, sixties and seventies of last century. His works include: (1) Tohfa-e-Itfaal – a collection of children poems, (2) Mizrab-e-Sukhan – a collection of nazams and geets, (3) Saaz-e-Naghmabaar – a collection of ghazals, qataats and rubaaees, and (4) Mazameen-e-Shaukat – a collection of some select articles.