Personal Life

Family

Ajith Kumar was born on 1 May 1971 to a Palakkad Iyer Iyer named P. Subramaniam and his wife Mohini, of Sindhi origin from Kolkata, West Bengal. Ajith later created the non-profit organisation "Mohini-Mani Foundation", named after his parents, in order to promote self-hygiene and civic consciousness and to help ease the problems of urban sprawl. Ajith Kumar was the middle son out of three brothers, the others being Anoop Kumar, a stockbroker in New York and Anil Kumar, an IIT Madras graduate working in Seattle. Moreover, Ajith had younger twin sisters, both of whom died young. Through his marriage to actress Shalini, Ajith became brother-in-law to actor, Richard Rishi, and actress Shamili, who appeared as his sister-in-law in Rajiv Menon's Kandukondain Kandukondain.

Relationships

In 1999, during the shoot of Saran's Amarkalam, Ajith began to date his co-star Shalini. At that time, their involvement made him a regular subject of tabloid gossip, a role to which he was accustomed following his previous relationship. Ajith proposed to Shalini in June 1999, and following consultations with her family, she agreed. They were married in April 2000 in Chennai in a grand ceremony. As both were of different religions, Ajith being a Hindu Brahmin and Shalini being Protestant Christian, they were married together under the customs of both religions. After their marriage, Shalini retired as an actress and became a full-time housewife, following the completion of two unfinished projects.^[On 3 January 2008, their daughter, Anoushka, was born in Chennai.