Your orginal URL is the point of using mod_rewrite.
It is to turn URLs such as
website.com/index.php?id=3&name=Tim&a=grep
into
website.com/index.php/3/Time/grep
Like your current URL.
Pulling the data from the URL ina neater fashion. If you change the URL to read /contact/, how is the server going to know what the data it really needs is (i.e. 3, Tim, grep)?