RESOLVED:
It's likely that cloudflare was having some internal issue, but upon checking https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/ I was left more confused is there was any incident on their end in my region. It's buried under scheduled maintanaces and other stuff.
I still not sure if this was the correct resolution, but it started working after executing these steps.
sudo apt-get install -y systemd
sudo nano /etc/systemd/resolved.conf
Added the DNS of Cloudflare and google
# This file is part of systemd.
#
# systemd is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the
# terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free
# Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option)
# any later version.
#
# Entries in this file show the compile time defaults. Local configuration
# should be created by either modifying this file, or by creating "drop-ins" in
# the resolved.conf.d/ subdirectory. The latter is generally recommended.
# Defaults can be restored by simply deleting this file and all drop-ins.
#
# Use 'systemd-analyze cat-config systemd/resolved.conf' to display the full config.
#
# See resolved.conf(5) for details.
[Resolve]
# Some examples of DNS servers which may be used for DNS= and FallbackDNS=:
# Cloudflare: 1.1.1.1
#cloudflare-dns.com 1.0.0.1#cloudflare-dns.com 2606:4700:4700::1111
#cloudflare-d># Google: 8.8.8.8
#dns.google 8.8.4.4
#dns.google 2001:4860:4860::8888
#dns.google 2001:4860:4860::8>
# Quad9: 9.9.9.9#dns.quad9.net 149.112.112.112
#dns.quad9.net 2620:fe::fe
#dns.quad9.net 2620:fe::>
DNS=1.1.1.1 8.8.8.8
sudo systemd-resolve --flush-caches
# didn't work
systemd-resolve --status
# wasn't even running. So maybe the config change was irrelevant
Reboot and started working... and I am not sure how this is possible...
Anyway that for the help. This issue was plaguing me for a few days.