Ashok Kumar was born Kumudlal Ganguly in Bhagalpur, then in the Bengal Presidency and now lying in Bihar, into a Bengali Brahmin family. His father, Kunjlal Ganguly, was a lawyer while his mother, Gouri Devi, was a home-maker. Kumudlal (as he was then known) was the eldest of four children. A couple of years younger to him was his only sister, Sati Devi, who was married at a very young age to Sashadhar Mukherjee and became the matriarch of a large “Family Film”. More than fourteen years younger than Kumudlal was his next brother, Kalyan (b.1926), who later took the screen name Anoop Kumar, and youngest of all was Abhas (b.1929), whose screen name was Kishore Kumar and who became a phenomenally successful playback singer of Hindi films. Although the eldest of the three brothers by several years, Ashok Kumar outlived his siblings. In fact, he stopped celebrating his birthday after his youngest brother, Kishore, died on that very day (Ashok's birthday) in 1987.