Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig phoolwala.net. NS
Answer
phoolwala.net. 5 NS ns56.domaincontrol.com.
phoolwala.net. 5 NS ns55.domaincontrol.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0